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hey y'all so having your llc does not mean that you own your brand name in order to own your brand name you must have a federal trademark registration what if i told you that you can file your trademark without hiring an attorney yes it's true and we are going to go step by step of how to file a trademark application without spending all the big bucks with hiring an attorney so welcome back to my channel i am boss attorney bri and this is the place for influencers and content creators to come to boss up their business the legal and legit way like i said we are going to be discussing how you file a trademark on your own without an attorney as we know trademarks fall under the law and it is always recommended that you hire an attorney to help you file your trademark but also as being an attorney and working with a lot of new business owners i understand that filing a trademark with an attorney can be really really expensive and using a document preparation service such as legal zoom or trademark engine can end up making you waste the money because they are not doing the research of an attorney so today i am going to be walking you through the steps to file your trademark application on your own without spending the big money with the attorneys and without wasting money by using a document preparation service so let's get started the first step to filing your trademark application comes way before you actually click that button to file the trademark application the first thing you must do before you file your trademark is to do a trademark search with the united states patent and trademark office that website is uspto.gov and you will go there and do a basic trademark search to make sure that your name is still available as a trademark also remember when you are searching your trademark name it is important to realize that just because a name is not on the register does not mean that there may be someone else out there using the name so on top of searching the uspto make sure you also search social media and google in general to make sure that your name is not being used another important step to searching your trademark name is to check for variations of the name because to have a trademark you do not necessarily need to have the same name conflicting with you you may also get denied if you have a similar name conflicting with you so make sure that you check your name and you check the variation of spelling of your name another thing to realize when searching your trademark is that your trademark must be strong enough to survive as a trademark so just because you don't see a name out there on the uspto that someone is using the name they may still be out there so that is why it's really important to search google because if your name is considered generic or descriptive someone may not try to register that name but they may already be out there so make sure that your name is unique when you are filing a trademark the next step to filing your trademark is still before you actually file your trademark you are going to want to determine what class of goods or service that your trademark application will fall under you can figure out what class your trademark falls under by searching the uspto's id manual by typing in the word of the goods or the products or services that your company sells you will be able to find what class of goods or service you fall into it is important to search all products or services that you have and the ones that you intend to expand into so that you can list each one of those things within the same application because if you register your trademark and you say that you're doing apparel but you only register for t-shirts but it turns out that you're also doing leggings and pants and sweatshirts then you may not be fully protected under your trademark it's really important to determine what class your products and services fall into because you do not want to end up applying for the same trademark in the same class because that is going to increase the amount of money that you pay in addition you want to know what class your products or services fall under because if they do not fall within the same category and you file that application together you are going to end up paying more than one fee because each class of goods or services require that you pay an additional application fee so it is super important that you know which classes your products and services fall under because that way you can determine how much money you are going to end up paying before you actually submit the application the third step is to actually file your trademark application you file your trademark application online on uspto.gov it will require you to create an account so that you can file the application and then you will begin to fill out the information the first page of the application includes general information such as the owner's name whether you're an llc your address and any other contact information that that page asks you for the next page asks you to enter your trademark on this page you will upload either your logo or you will type your name in plain text depending on what type of trademark you are filing for once you do that you will submit specimens specimens are proof that you are using your trademark so you have to show the government that you are actually using the trademark before you can actually get a trademark registration there is an intent to use application that at the time that you submit your application you do not have to show that you are actually using the trademark you can submit the application without the specimens or without the proof that you are actually using the trademark but before your trademark registers you will have to show proof that you are using that trademark in commerce so basically you are putting it out there for people to be able to buy your product or service and then of course you can review your application you sign it you pay and it will give you your receipt and your application number so that you can easily find your trademark application once your trademark application is submitted the uspto will assign an examiner to your application typically this will take about three months but at the time of this recording the uspto is really behind in assigning examiners to applications so you can expect to wait up to five months maybe even longer depending on what category you are filing in once that examiner gets your application they have the choice to accept your application or issue an office action to you that is a refusal for the uspto to register your trademark for whatever reason okay so filing for a trademark is not guaranteed so it's really important that you have all the correct information put into your application to give you a better chance of getting your trademark registered the trademark process altogether generally takes 8 to 12 months but again like i said at the time of this recording they are pretty backed up so it could end up taking longer depending on what class your trademark is in and how many confusingly similar marks there are if you have any questions ab
Thanks for your comment Jamey Cushway, have a nice day.
- Rupert Lide, Staff Member
alright hi again attorney Steve entre and we're back licensed pecs law California in Arizona we take federal trademark cases and copyright cases intellectual property nationwide alright in this video we are going to be talking about the getting a trademark without hiring an a lawyer okay so a lot of people want to come out of the gates a lot of startups they want their trademarks but they're not going we had then the attorneys want like fifteen hundred bucks or two grand and so this video really is about how to get your trademark to apply for a trademark without an attorney if you're in that position so let's just go the trademarks is basically a federal this is a federal registration system okay so there are state trademarks you can register to get state trademark protection in your state most states that I'm aware of have a state trademark registration system but really the granddaddy and what everybody wants is these federal trademarks these are gonna give you the nationwide rights that's what a lot of companies are looking for especially just getting out of the gate wanting that protection that they can sell nationwide okay and this is for your goods or your services you can get a trademark for your products you can get a service mark for your services okay so what I'm looking for actually is a I'm gonna be going for a service mark to describe my services from my law firm and I'm looking for the name the first name in legal services so one of my branding techniques that I use on facebook on my live videos and elsewhere is attorney Steve comm the first name in legal services and so I want to go get a trademark for that today so what I want to do is just go to the USPTO that's the Patent and Trademark Office click on your trademark button and if you want to search it's always recommended that you first do a search just to see if there's anyone else already there why would you plot apply for a trademark if somebody's already there you would be wasting your money okay and once you file these things you can't get them you can't get your money back okay so let's just go the first name in legal services and let's do a search and see if anybody has that so I searched I don't see anything there I feel pretty comfortable now I've also done that which you haven't seen I've also done what I just call a common law search searching around seeing seeing what else might be out there but I didn't see anything so I feel pretty good that I can get a service mark for the first name in legal services which describes my services we are the first named attorney Steve calm ok so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say fine I feel good about that I'm gonna go get that trademark so here's how I do it ok so go back to your USPTO click your trademarks button go apply online now this is T's and there's different ways to apply but I just come right here to the t's ok and you have your t's reduced form regular form T's plus form now you can see here the classes of goods and services here only 225 and it goes up from there the t's reduce fee form if you have a long description that you want to get in there this is it's better to go this way I just filed one for example for clothing and because I had hurt you know shirts hats hoodies you know all that stuff I put it in here with a with a with a special description of the goods ok so but I'm gonna go for my purposes I'm gonna go right here it's 225 per class of goods and services and we'll get to that in a second but here's all you do click on this and this is gonna pull up the page read everything on this page I don't have time to go over all this for you this is quick and dirty but read everything on the page they understand what's going on and for me since I'm an attorney filing this application I'm gonna get right into it yes if you had a previously saved file that you were working from you could do that but I'm just gonna go continue so that's easy page 1 owner of the mark is gonna be my law office right there so you type in the name of your law office or whoever is gonna own the mark and it could be a corporation in my case it's a corporation could be individual it could be a partnership joint venture you could just be a sole proprietor doesn't really matter get that in there if you're a company you may want to consider corporations and we can help you with California and Arizona corporations but once you select that get your state in there this is going to be California okay and then you're gonna have your street address so we're just gonna use our our office address there up in San Francisco California and you can do your zip code do you zip code there and you can type in some of this is pre-populated from previous trademark filings your phone your fax the items in red are required you have to have those these you do not but these can be deemed as helpful if you have a website you can put that in there if you want and I'm just going I'll just put for now I'll put the attorney Steve calm I've got my email address in there so bingo so now you're done with two pages okay check to make sure everything's right you want this to be accurate okay so check to make sure everything's right if you say yes that looks good go continue down here at the bottom okay so now you're down with two pages you're working your way through here okay owner of the mark corporation whoops you must specify through one or if you make an error you will see this up here at the top which is good it just alerts you that there's an area you must specify through one of the four check box DBA also known as the actual name so here whether these problem is I accidentally pre-populated that I did not want to do that so I'm not I'm not a DBA I'm not also known as it's none of that so let's just keep it at that and let's try to continue again okay so now we're on the next page now they're asking me what kind of mark I'm applying for if you're doing a logo and all that stuff you can click here special you can also get trademarks for sounds people don't know that a lot of people don't know that but like the intel sound do do do you know you can your any any kind of sound mark that's distinguishing your goods and services you can get a sound mark for that's pretty cool if you think about it so think about that this is your logos but for me this is just a standard character and I'm just gonna put the first name the first if I can type it that is the first name in legal services okay so that's what I want you can preview it here the first name in legal services like yeah maybe I'll just capitalize the I while I'm at it you know so we'll just we'll just do that the first name and legal services okay that looks good that's what I want that's gonna be my trade Markus should we call it my service mark a same thing when you get a trademark or a service mark you get the R with the circle on it that's what you want okay so that's what we're going for now if you have an additional statement to add sometimes you have this happens quite a bit II actually you have to disclaim something like let's just say you're trying to get the word amazing legal well you'll have t
Thanks Tamar your participation is very much appreciated
- Rupert Lide
About the author
I've studied media archaeology at St. Johns River State College in Palatka and I am an expert in lexicology. I usually feel thankful. My previous job was pirate I held this position for 9 years, I love talking about radio-controlled model playing and pilates. Huge fan of Aaron Tveit I practice gymnastics: rhythmic and collect books and periodicals.
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